


Bodyache

by Froggyflan



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Heavy Angst, I'm Bad At Tagging, It's gross, M/M, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:44:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8276492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Froggyflan/pseuds/Froggyflan
Summary: Roadhog is careless and Junkrat gets hurt





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a commission for MK, who requested "a very angsty fic where JR gets severely hurt because of some error from RH. Lots of gore+blood if possible and lots of guilt from RH. You can end it with fluff/smut if you want :DDD Or have it soul crushingly sad at the end."
> 
> Guess which option I took.
> 
>  
> 
> [I'm still taking commissions!](http://froggyflan.tumblr.com)

“Don’t worry,” falls from trembling lips and Junkrat’s hands clamp over the big red mess splashed across his stomach. He rests on his back, eyes up to the brown sky. “I took care of ‘em.”

The scene starts to piece together. There are two charred bodies sizzling in the dirt, and another propped up against the blackened and smoky bricks of the alley wall, as if they were just dozing off and not missing half of their face. The ground is cratered at Junkrat’s feet. It had been one of the pipe bombs from Junkrat’s bandolier, which was discarded nearby, as if someone had ripped it off. 

Roadhog comes closer and Junkrat visibly relaxes, like he was finally being saved. But Roadhog feels sick and ugly inside, like something’s wrung too tight.

It had just been a minute, he thinks. He’d gone to fill up the bike and see about getting some supplies from the old petrol station. Junkrat had been tinkering, filling the silence with nervous giggling and rambling. Roadhog had told him to watch the bike, just for a minute. The convenience store didn’t have much for them, just a jug of dirty water and some heavily expired candy. Next thing he knew, Junkrat was gone and the bang of an explosion popped his ears, sent him running toward it. A minute.

A soft airy sigh escapes Junkrat, and Roadhog sees he’s shaking like a dog caught in the rain. He hates the watery look in his eyes. Blood leaks through the clenched fingers at his middle, seeping out quickly into the dirt.

Junkrat could handle watching the bike. He’d done it a thousand times before. Roadhog wasn’t sure what made this time so different. This shanty town was just as dirty and derelict as all the others they’d passed through, nothing that made it more or less dangerous, nothing that made them think they couldn’t take down every single person here. 

And yet Junkrat had warned him, hadn’t he? “They know me here,” he’d said. But Roadhog had kept driving, because everyone knew Junkrat; he was the most wanted man in all of Straya. Roadhog was his bodyguard, and he’d reminded him of that fact. He’d protect him. That was his job. Junkrat hadn’t brought it up again, trusted him to do what he was being paid to do, and then he’d been ambushed when Roadhog wasn’t looking, dragged off and torn down in an alley while he was busy choosing what kind of sweets he wanted. 

Roadhog kneels down slowly and Junkrat tenses right back up. Assessing the damage is impossible with all the blood oozing everywhere he looks, soaking Junkrat’s shorts and coating his skin, making the dirt stick to him in thick sheets. One of his eyes is swollen shut and purpling already, and his left cheekbone is definitely caved in. There's blood in his mouth, and Roadhog’s not sure if it's from missing teeth or from something ruptured deep inside. Junkrat turns his head and spits off to the side, but it isn’t strong enough to go far so it just dribbles down his chin instead. The beginning of bruises map along his shoulders and chest, splotchy spots on his arms where they’d held him down. It looks like someone had used him as a human punching bag. 

It had only been a minute.

Roadhog looks over his red stained, red bruised body and he feels his own hands shaking too, fidgeting in and out of fists. He can't quite figure out what he should inspect first. It all looks bad, and every bit of it makes his mouth go dry. When he decides that whatever Junkrat is hiding on his belly is most important, and as he reaches for it, the trembling mess of a man shakes his head. 

“No,” Junkrat whispers, begs, but he doesn't move, not an inch. He's pale white beneath the trauma and the blood, his double decade's tan fading as quick as the fluids trickling from his gut. His raspy breaths are slow and strained. Each one must be a goddamn miracle. Junkrat's fingers latch together hard, cupping his stomach tight and firm. “Don't, mate.”

He has to. Roadhog has to see it. He begins to pry Junkrat's long shaky fingers away carefully, one by one, despite the quiet desperate pleas that burn hot in his ears. Junkrat is a steel trap: he's rigid, unmoving, not even squirming as Roadhog peels him away to reveal his secret. 

Guts. Pink and slippery and wet. A long uneven cut slashes across his belly button like someone had tried to spill him all out. Roadhog had gutted a lot of men in his career, seen a lot of roadkill. The way intestines burst out like they were too big, too much to be contained in a body, always made Roadhog wonder why animals were built this way. It reminds him of those old gag canisters that pop out streamers instead of nuts.

Junkrat’s breathing gets faster and his face contorts into a tight, worried grimace, as if he was only allowed to panic now that Roadhog had seen it. “I ain’t gonna make it, am I?”

Roadhog doesn’t answer him, doesn’t want to, and instead pulls a canister of hogdrogen from his pocket. Junkrat looks at it and laughs out a pitiful gurgle that makes Roadhog shudder in the heat of the afternoon sun.

“It ain’t gonna work.”

“Shut up,” comes out before he can stop himself, and for once Junkrat listens. His bloody lips are turned up into a terrible smile when Roadhog takes his mask off, and he can finally smell the copper in the air, the sulfur and gunpowder and burning earth. He sees Junkrat clearly now, the red spread over everything is so much more vivid, more real than it was behind glass eyes. The gravity of the situation rolls over him painfully, now that he wasn’t hiding beneath a different face.

Junkrat is staring up at him with stars in his eyes, like Roadhog is the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, prettier than a big boom. He expects him to say something about the way he looks, but he doesn’t. He’s only seen him like this a handful of times, and each time it’s followed by loving touches and too many annoying questions about scars and why he hides them away. He told him he wants to see him more often. This time, he just lets Roadhog slip the mask over his face instead. The can is shoved into the filter, decompressing with a hiss.

The air is thick with yellow fumes, and Roadhog watches it all escape out the top of the mask. Junkrat’s head is too small, can’t keep it on right, but he hears him breathing in the best he can, his chest expanding carefully. He coughs, and the gas explodes out the sides, followed by a horrified whine as blood starts to seep down his neck, his hands clutching at his abdomen. The cough seemed to have pushed more of his insides out.

“Hog, I can’t,” he slurs behind heavy stitched leather. He sounds seconds from passing out, and Roadhog isn’t surprised. He reaches behind Junkrat’s head to pull the straps as tight as he can, holding them in place when they can’t be adjusted any further. He presses the can down again and the gas fills the mask with much less leakage.

Junkrat squirms for a second before going still, breathing loudly, slowly, gently. He grasps at Roadhog’s hand, fingers sticky with his own gore, slipping and sliding over the spikes of his gloves. There’s been a lot of blood on these hands, but never Junkrat’s. Not ever.

Roadhog watches the little nicks and bruises along his chest start to disappear, the rivers of blood going dry as the color returns to his skin. It’s starting to work, but the gash in his belly stays the same. It seems to tremble and shift, but nothing happens. Maybe it was just the stutter of Junkrat’s breathing.

Roadhog can’t say he’s ever hurt himself quite as bad as this. He’s never had to hold his own intestines in his hands, that was for sure. Hogdrogen was perfect when he was full of shrapnel or bullets. One hit of the stuff would pop it all out and seal him up. It didn’t cure diseases, sickness, radiation. Maybe it didn’t know how to suck guts back in either.

Junkrat gets enough strength to push the mask up to his hair, the rest of the gas going up with a puff, and he gasps a long strangled breath of fresh air.

“It ain’t workin’,” he cries, and the desperation is back in his eyes, in his bared teeth. His face is healed, his energy back, but he’s still gutted like a fish. Junkrat tries to push his them back in, but he has to stifle a yell and can barely press a single fingertip against the wound. Junkrat breathes deep, blinks his eyes a few times before the tears start to come. “It ain’t workin’.”

The squishy organs pulse gently to Junkrat’s heartbeat, fast and faint like a hummingbird. With all the blood, Roadhog can’t tell if any of it had been punctured. He has to assume the hogdrogen patched up any cuts. Junkrat is crying, horrible and choked and disgusting. His shoulders heave up and down in panic, but he can’t move much without jostling the gaping wound.

Roadhog cups a large hand under Junkrat’s knees, the prosthetic joint pinching at his skin, and puts his other hand on his back. He hates the feel of his boney, bumpy spine. It makes the moment even more hideous. He starts to lift him up, but Junkrat is already screaming like a banshee, pushing a slick red hand against Roadhog’s naked cheek as if it would stop him, cursing and yelling louder than he’s ever been before. He’s alerting the whole damn country.

“Stop,” is slurred over and over again, and Roadhog’s going to need a mop for all the tears and drool and snot pouring out of Junkrat’s face. He hefts him up as gently as he can, but every little movement makes the guts wiggle like jelly, and Junkrat lets out a tremendous, scratching howl that must be ripping apart his throat.

As he walks, Junkrat yanks the mask over his face with frantic fumbling fingers, pressing the can down and letting himself be bathed in the gas again. He heaves like he’s going to vomit, and each step makes him cry out sharp and piercing. Roadhog wishes his gait wasn’t so dramatic, wasn’t so wide. It would make this a lot less painful. 

He isn’t sure how to put Junkrat in the sidecar without straining his wound. Putting him in a sitting position makes the bloody tangle of flesh tumble into his lap, pulling out gooey viscera with gravity alone. Junkrat is clawing at the mask desperately, trying to breathe in fast enough to combat the maddening agony. It doesn’t work.

There isn’t anything Roadhog can do, which is not something that happens often. They’ll have to get to a doctor, but the next town isn’t for three days. They’ve got the petrol to get there, but definitely not the time. Roadhog knows he can’t keep the wound clean, not with the dusty air and tainted water. Maybe the hogdrogen would keep the infection at bay.

Junkrat looks like he’s hyperventilating, the way he’s shaking and breathing desperately. Roadhog can’t stop staring at the ropes of intestines resting on Junkrat’s reddened shorts. The blood was starting to crust from the arid heat, and the gooey insides were starting to look less glossy and more baked. He rifles through the bike’s saddlebags and pulls out the cleanest rag he could find, pats out what dirt he can, and saturates it in the water from the petrol station. Everything is tinged yellow, specks of black and brown. Who knew what was in this water, but it was water all the same.

He gingerly lays it across the mess on Junkrat’s lap, who immediately lets out a low pained whine at the sudden contact, sucking up more gas. He’s taking too much, and it’s making him sway and tremble in his seat.

“Slow down,” Roadhog murmurs.. He’s already huffed enough to kill a small child, and he’s nothing but skin and bones anyway. He’d be passing out soon enough, and it’s for the best. If he’s crying at the slightest little movement now, he’d be losing his mind with the bump and rattle of the road. “Take it easy.”

He waits for Junkrat to come down off his frenzy, waits for his head to tilt all the way back until it looks like his neck is going to snap. Roadhog straddles the bike and guides Junkrat’s head until he’s resting against his hip, the tips of his ratty hair tickling his belly. He holds him there, keeps him pressed close until his breathing slows down and his muscles loosen. He takes back the mask, making sure his eyes are definitely closed and he’s out cold. He doesn’t even wake up when Roadhog starts the engine and the bike vibrates to life. Roadhog pulls a blanket from the floor of the sidecar and lays it over his lower half, tucking in the corners so it won’t fly away. Then, he drives.

The wind is harsh, just as always, and he’s afraid the blanket will fly up at any moment, dislodging the makeshift bandage and ruining the calm he’d created. But it doesn’t, just flutters violently at the corners and it isn’t doing much to protect the cloth from becoming dry. Every once in awhile he’ll remove his hand from Junkrat’s head and grab the water, dousing his lap to keep it moist. Junkrat doesn’t wake for anything, and that makes Roadhog both thankful and uneasy.

Something deep down cuts and twists and churns angrily, and Roadhog knows what is going to happen. He knows, but he’s going to fight it tooth and nail, because that’s what he does. He’s not going to fail again.

The drive is strenuous in every way he can think of. The sand bites at his skin like needles and the sun cooks him until the sweat stops coming. He’s so used to Junkrat filling the silence, and now it’s just the whistle of the breeze and the gunning of an engine. It drags on the time, makes it seem like he’s driving in a straight line toward nothing. The rocks and bushes all look the same when there’s nobody in your ear keeping you entertained. His thoughts are all his own, and they’re taking him over and making him itch and hate and burn. The feeling doesn’t go away, not until the sun is knocked from the sky and Roadhog can barely see the road in front of him. The moon hides tonight, and the world is pitch black by the time he realizes he can’t go any further, not unless he wants to run them off a cliff.

There’s no shelter, but the wind had settled enough for it to be alright, just alright. He leaves Junkrat in his car as he sets out bedrolls and breaks apart a sickly little tree for firewood. Junkrat was always the one to set the fire, so this time it is small and sad, nothing dramatic and beautiful, and it paints the dark desert in a little flicker of orange. They are alone in the vast, open nothing.

Junkrat only comes to when he’s laid out on their ratty blankets, and he wakes with a wet, bloody cough, surging up and spraying back into his own face. His body vibrates into consciousness, skin hot and clammy and sick. His eyes stay closed, and his hands press to the sides of his wound, wanting to touch and somehow soothe the searing pain. He cries out, but it's gargled beneath a mouthful of red. It's a pathetic sight, and it makes Roadhog queasy. 

He gives Junkrat the mask again, inserting another can of hogdrogen to ease his way back into the world. The hiss is drowned out in the crackle of the fire, and the desperate gasps from earlier are just exhausted little wheezes now. The gas isn't working. He breathes like he barely has lungs, and when Roadhog touches his chest, he feels the heat of fever, the sweat in the cold night. He breathes, and it’s wrong. 

Roadhog isn't a doctor, not by any means, but Junkrat is ill with something. With all the blood he’s spewing, he assumes it’s his lungs, maybe his stomach. The fever and tremors rocking his body are of their own, maybe the infection kicking in, maybe something more. It’s all just “maybe”s. He doesn’t know shit, can’t do anything. Whatever he does will be useless.

He makes sure the cloth over Junkrat's stomach is thoroughly soaked and as clean as he can make it in this filthy, barren desert. Lithe hands touch him, drawing him closer without so much as a tug or beckon, and he is as lost as those lackluster eyes peeking out from sunken dark lids. 

Junkrat tries to say something, but his mouth flaps like it’s unsure how to move, what with the blood filing it. He slowly turns his head and lets it spill out over his cheek onto the bedroll. He has a voice, and it is as soft as it is pitiful. “I should tell ya.”

That gut wrenching feeling from before comes to a head as Roadhog watches the dirty, ruined man lay in his own blood and entrails trying to give away his most coveted secret. He had done this. Roadhog had done this. He had failed and he would have to live with this. Junkrat would be another name, another face that would haunt him when dreams came. 

“Don't,” Roadhog tells him, and the sheer thought of it makes his teeth grind and his skin pop with goosebumps. Not again. He wouldn't fail again. They'd make it through the night, and in the morning Roadhog would make him breakfast and drive all day until his body screams for him to stop and then he'd still keep going.

There's a wet, rasping breath and a red grin. “I need to pay ya.”

Roadhog can't help the way he looms over Junkrat, a fist clenched in the dirt by his sooty blond hair. His big shadow hides him from the warm hues of the fire behind them, and Junkrat still shines in the dark.

“I fucked up,” Roadhog answers, and Junkrat is too busy touching his rough, stubbled face to process it. “You don’t pay someone who fucks up.”

Junkrat shivers and fidgets gently, his Adam's apple bobbing as he struggles to swallow his own saliva and blood. His hands ghost over Roadhog's jaw, his thick cheeks, his broad nose. Fingers dance over old scars and older tattoos, and each touch sets him ablaze with anger and fear and complete and utter weakness.

“I want to sleep,” he says, and Roadhog stares him down as the touches continue, coaxing him to stay. He lays in the dirt and lets Junkrat roam his face. “Can't sleep without talking.”

It hadn't stopped him from passing out earlier, but Roadhog shifts closer, presses his belly to Junkrat's side, feels the vibrating skin and sweat. He needs to be comforted, just as Roadhog does.

“What do you want me to say?”

Junkrat smiles, and wipes a dirty finger under Roadhog's eye, smearing soot and blood on his skin. “What's your name?”

He's told him a hundred times, and he'd tell him a thousand times more.

“Mako. I lived by the sea.”

“Yeah,” Junkrat hums like he remembers, and his fingers follow the grooves of his ears. “You're a shark.”

“Yeah,” Roadhog answers, and the fingers move to trace the swirls of his tattoos. “Did I ever tell you about the time I caught one?”

He had. He'd told him that tale on a cold night in July when he’d spied the toothy scar on his forearm, and Roadhog had given in to his questions. Junkrat had eaten the story up like he was starving. He’d never seen the ocean, he’d said, and the next day they were heading south to Esperance.

“No, ya never told me.”

Roadhog tells him again, as the fire burns gently in the dark, and he lays a large hand over his little thumping chest, feeling his heart working overtime, not enough blood, too sick. He tells him about his boat, his cottage on the coast, his fistfight with the ocean’s deadliest creature. When he says words in his native tongue, Junkrat parrots them back silently, rolling his tongue and smacking his lips. He tells Junkrat about the island, about how trees and grass and animals looked before the bomb blew them all away.

He doesn’t know at what part Junkrat finally falls asleep, because he just keeps telling the story. He wants to keep talking, thinking that Junkrat would wake up at any moment and ask him to keep going. But he doesn’t. His heart pumps in fast little ticks, like a bomb, until it goes slow, until it’s too gentle to feel.

When it stops, the fire is just embers, and the stars are hidden behind poison clouds and dust storms. It’s all black, and Roadhog presses down hard to make sure the thumping is really gone. The sweat dries in the wind, and it does not come back. Fevered skin becomes cold, breathless, and he’s not sure why he thought he could fix this.

The light of morning is a terrible thing, and Roadhog has to look at his peacefully resting face like it’s okay. His eyes are sunken and his lips are blue, and he really didn’t want to see him like this. Now he’s just another body for him to walk away from. Not the first and not the last.

Roadhog lays a blanket over him with a nauseating ache that he’s all too familiar with. He hasn’t had someone to bury in over 20 years. He doesn’t have a shovel, doesn’t have a way to do it. These days, the dead are left to rot. There were no cemeteries, no priests or pretty ways to lay someone to rest. They baked in the sun just like everything else. Let the dingos eat them, let the buzzards feast.

He won’t. Instead, Roadhog spreads petrol over his shroud and lights it up. He won’t let him be ripped apart by dogs. It’s not a bang like he always wanted, but it’s good enough.

The smell of burning hair and flesh travels downwind, and his mask barely keeps it out. Roadhog watches skin burn, blackening and charring and cracking. It takes a long time for a body to burn, he thinks, and it is a disgusting, unreal sight. He’d say he can’t bear to watch, but he can. He needs to see what he’d done.

The sun is high above him when he finally comes back to himself, and he’s steel and rust and pain. It has yet to sink in, as he watches the flames spiral with the breeze. He didn’t want this to get the better of him. He’s an Enforcer, an animal, a hunter. He’s no longer a bodyguard. He’s no longer a caretaker or a babysitter, however he wanted to reason it. He didn’t belong to anyone anymore.

The thought bears down on him like a thousand bricks, and it’s too difficult to think about. Happy mornings and loving nights are gone. He’s back to the old days, alone in the desert with nothing but night terrors. And as much as he wants to be upset about it, he can’t be. He did this.

Mako will remember Jamison Fawkes. Roadhog won’t. He’ll be on to his next meal ticket. But Mako will remember a happy face and bad jokes and fidgety touches. He’ll remember feathery kisses and genuine adoration. Quiet nights will take him back to these memories, and he’ll be haunted until the day he carks it too. It will be the only thing he has: a silly faced ghost to remind him he had failed. 

It’s all he deserves.

He gets on his bike with the empty sidecar, and drives.


End file.
